Last Sunday at All Nations we took time to hear people from the church share some of the things that the Lord has been doing through them and to them. We heard a report of the work in Sri Lanka from Jesuthasan Servasai and his wife Berny; Renji from India told how he prayed over his father who had died; Joshua Jones recounted how Jesus removed the tumour that had been in his leg for seven years!
Hear these amazing reports and testimonies.
You can also see them at testiminute.com
Last weekend Dianne and I visited our church in Preston, Lancashire, which is led by our dear friends Mark and Marjan de Leeuw van Weenen. We had a great time with the people of God in that pioneer work. We were blessed in so many ways. The one I want to share is about a financial blessing we received.
Last summer, at our annual Bible Week, I prayed for a young man who was in financial need. As a token of God's provision to him I sowed a certain amount of money to him as I ministered to him. I forgot all about it. At the meeting in Preston last Sunday, Dianne and I wanted to sow into the offering. We agreed how much we would give and Dianne popped the money into my shirt pocket. The moment she did, the same man I had prayed for last year came over to us and reminded us of what I had done for him. He then handed me an envelope in appreciation. I put it in my bag. Later, when we got home, I opened it to find that he had reaped back to me three times the amount I had sowed to the Lord in him.
Back to the meeting: when the time came to give into the offering Dianne and I put our agreed amount into the basket. We always sow with thanksgiving and faith. As soon as we sat down another brother came up behind me and put something into the same shirt pocket I had just taken our offering from. When we were in the car driving home later on, I put my hand in and pulled out five times the amount we had sown!
You can never out give your heavenly Father!
I heard an amazing testimony yesterday at our Sunday meeting at All Nations. Over the Easter weekend, one of the ladies in the church, Florence, became sick with a very bad throat infection. The pain was so bad she described trying to eat and drink like swallowing razor blades.
Florence decided the best place for her to be on Easter Sunday, despite her illness, was at church, worshipping the risen Lord Jesus. During our worship, Andrew Caughey, one of my fellow elders and a prophet, began to prophesy using an Easter egg. He told how God wants us to keep breaking out and to demonstrate that he began to peel the foil off the egg, calling out things that needed to be peeled off us. Then he broke the egg up and it fell in pieces on the floor.
As people responded in faith to the prophecy the Holy Spirit told me to start throwing pieces of the chocolate out over the people, which I did. I had no idea why I had to do it; I just obeyed.
Well, at the same time as I began to throw it, dear Florence was responding to what had come in the prophecy; she wanted to be healed. Suddenly she saw a piece of chocolate flying towards her and reached out to catch it. She said to herself, 'I am claiming my healing now, and I'm going to eat this chocolate'. She slipped the chocolate into her mouth, ate it, swallowed it, and at that very moment was completely healed!
Last Sunday at All Nations, Keri Jones was speaking about the fear of God; and how the Lord protects those who fear him. That prompted one of the ladies - Emma Butler - to come up and give a testimony how only last week the Lord did just that with her little girl who got out of her baby seat and opened the back door of the car while Emma was on the motorway.
Yesterday I received this email from Nathalie MacDermott, another member of our church....
I am in Switzerland with my Mum at the moment. We flew here on Friday from London; at check in we discovered that my mum had booked me on the wrong flight and that I would have to be on standby for that flight. Praise God, though the flight was completely full, I got the last seat. I was wondering if there was a reason for this but at the time none came to mind. Having had some very bad flights in my life, sometimes I get a bit nervous when there is turbulence, however, I was talking to God and I had absolute peace about this, God really confirmed that I have too much left to do in this life for me to worry about the plane crashing. When we landed in Zurich my Mum drove me and my grandparents back to our flat. Driving along a single carriage way a motorcycle (apparently one of the fastest and heaviest you can get - a BMW 1025cc bike) on the other side of the road decided to overtake a car in front of him at about 100km/hr, he swerved into our lane right in front of us and so my mum swerved into the bus lane, but he just kept coming straight at us. All of a sudden there was a huge bang on the left side of the car (mine and the driver’s side) and glass shattered all around me and my mum. I tried to get out of the car but the door would not open, then I noticed I could see outside through gaps in the door. He hit us so hard that the bike tore off the external part of my door flinging it into the windscreen of the car behind. The bike then caught fire but was put out before it could explode. Both the bike and the car are write-offs. The motorcyclist walked away from the crash with just cuts and bruises. My family walked away with no problems and I just have a bruised and swollen knee. It is an amazing miracle of God's provision, I know His angels were there, if the bike had been 1 metre further to the left he would have hit us head on and none of us would have walked away. If I had not let my grandmother sit in the front she would have been in the back behind the driver’s seat where I was, an 82 year old lady would not get away with just a swollen knee.
Clearly I was on that flight for a reason.
Praise God for his provision and His angels!
The man stretched out his hand and it was completely restored. (Mark 3:5)
Yesterday we witnessed several healings in our Sunday meeting - praise the Lord! One of those we could attest to straight away involved a young lady called Lisa, who just before Christmas fell in the street and shattered the bones in her right arm. Lisa had to have an operation, but has been in terrible pain ever since, resulting in severely limited use of the arm. It was still pretty much locked at the elbow so that Lisa was unable to straighten her arm, touch her shoulder with her fingers or put her arm behind her back. She could not even turn her hand from side to side.
As Dianne and I prayed for Lisa the Lord touched her and healed her. All the pain went and total freedom of movement was restored to her arm. She wept with joy as she demonstrated her healing to the church and gave glory to Jesus who had healed her. Thank you Lord!
Just received an email from the folks in Gilman, Illinois, where Dianne and I visited last month. It reads...
A number of years ago, a middle aged lady from our church, named Leslie, was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. Over the past couple of years several of her liver enzymes (blood levels) have started to rise. A couple of months ago, her doctor told her that her blood levels were reaching critical levels. When Roger and Dianne were here in Gilman recently Leslie received prayer for her healing and she truly believed that God had healed her. A week later, she went back to the doctor for another visit, they drew more blood and her liver enzymes were completely normal. Her doctor was astonished. Our God is awesome!
Thank you Jesus; you did it again!
I am a blessed man. My dear friend Andrew Hughes has just called me from the States, and it was so refreshing to hear his voice. Andrew leads our church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we don't get a lot of opportunities to be together. But covenant friendship does not depend on geography; it's to do with the Holy Spirit and a shared vision. Dianne and I are so blessed to have friends like Andrew and his wife Angela.
A few days ago Angela sent us a card with some news about their son Keane. I just asked Andrew if I could blog it and he said yes. So here it is...
